Like You’ve Nothing Left to Prove (Breakaway #2)

by E.L. Massey

“I loved him against reason,” Eli shouts after Alex, “against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”

What does hurt is how broken, in retrospect, his relationship with James had been. How disjointed and noncommunicative and unintentionally cruel they’d been to each other—both terrified, with no idea how to love someone and no one they could go to for help with figuring out how. He can’t say he wishes that first desperate kiss at sixteen had never happened, but he hurts for his past self. For past James. For both of them. It wasn’t fair.

“Thank you,” he says, and he’s pretty sure if Eli’s skin wasn’t so dark, he’d be tomato red. “For what?” Eli asks. “Being with me.”

“Do not break my boyfriend,” Eli says, looking pointedly at Toby. “I know he’s an overly competitive moron, but his ankles are also worth several million dollars. So if any of you so much as thinks about tripping him to prove a point, I will have you excommunicated from this family. Everyone knows I’m Abuela’s favorite. I can make it happen.”

Eli loves him so much it’s a little scary.

And it makes him anxious, as if surely something will go wrong, has to go wrong because he doesn’t just get moments like this. Except maybe he does, now.

Maybe this is just his life, now. Maybe after everything, maybe he just gets to be happy.

He takes a breath. Starts again. “You deserve good things. To be treated like—like you’re the best thing. Because you are. And I know I’m going to fuck things up. I’ve never been in a relationship before, and I’m, you know, human. But this is something I can do right. Do better.”

there is no “should” or “shouldn’t” with feelings. You just feel them.

And the realization is both terrible and a little cathartic: Eli is worth it. Eli is worth risking hockey. Not at some indistinct time in the future, but now. Right now. “He’s my boyfriend,” Alex says. “Please, he’s my boyfriend. You have to let me see him.”

And Alex had never really understood when people said they wished they could take someone’s pain for them. To feel it instead. He’d never actually believed anyone could be that level of altruistic.

“Uh, yeah?” Alex says, tightening his grip on his stick. “I’d be a pretty shitty boyfriend if I wasn’t.”

He is quite possibly the most beautiful person Alex has ever seen.

“But I have warning for other teams if the league do the wrong thing. Anybody say bad things about Eli, my aim very good.”

“Oh, me?” Martel throws his thumb, cavalier, toward Okezie. “I’m just here as moral support for my boyfriend.”

“I fake-dated you for three months, and said I loved you in my head before I ever pined my way into kissing you in a fit of rage. I think we were worse.”

“On purpose. You’ve chosen to love me on purpose.” “I have,” Eli agrees, not laughing anymore. “Kinda hard not to though.”

“What?” Eli repeats, a little bemused now. Probably because Alex is staring at him like a dope. “Nothing. Just.” Alex kisses him one more time. “Hi.” Eli blinks up at him. Smiles a little. Kisses him back. “Hi,” he agrees.